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Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Value of Green Infrastructure

Some time ago we had a client who wanted to use solar panels for electricity in his house. Considering the saving in the electrical bill and taxes, he found out that he´d need 30 years to get his investment back. So, he said, the change wasn´t worth it.

The good news is that there is a new guide on line to help us decide about the true costs and benefits of green technology.

From the review by Kalle Butler Waterhouse:

In an era of shrinking coffers and aging infrastructure, the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) and American Rivers joined forces to outline a method for more accurately valuing the benefits of green infrastructure. The resulting guide, The Value of Green Infrastructure: A Guide to Recognizing Its Economic, Social and Environmental Benefits, establishes a framework that gives planners, builders, and city officials the ability to choose infrastructure investments that are effective, efficient, and long-lived.

The guide fills an information gap that has until this point hampered widespread deployment of green infrastructure, defined here as a network of decentralized stormwater management practices such as green roofs, trees, rain gardens and permeable pavement. The Value of Green Infrastructure brings together current research on green infrastructure performance and presents methods for calculating related benefits in water management, energy, air quality, climate, and community livability.

This work extends initial research conducted in support of CNT’s Green Values Calculator, a web-based tool that quickly compares the performance, costs, and benefits of green infrastructure to conventional stormwater practices. (...)

The research team then organized a workshop around these complex ideas. National experts brainstormed over the challenges and considerations required when working through an economic valuation of this nature. The ideas that the workshop elicited helped shape the robust layout and framework now represented by the guide, including the eight benefit sections (water, energy, air quality, climate change, urban heat island, community livability, habitat improvement, and public education) and the two-step valuation and quantification process.

CNT believes the guide is very effective in compiling the various benefits of green infrastructure and establishing a logical framework for valuation. The Value of Green Infrastructure is intended to help decision-makers begin informed conversations about the true costs and benefits of green infrastructure solutions. While the economic values it presents are based on current research, many of the estimates likely undervalue the true worth of green infrastructure. More research is needed to put more accurate dollar figures on the full range of environmental, economic and social benefits.

This space is to share and analyze thoughts about different readings, in English and Spanish. Your contribution in your native language is welcome. I accept to write reviews of your books, if you mail (email) them to me, but this blog doesn´t promote Editors. I post whatever pleases or interests me.

About Me

Myriam B. Mahiques is an architect, graduated from Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires (FADU) in 1986. She has collaborated in many Studios and Construction firms, developed projects and constructions as independent professional, also competitions and exhibitions in the area of Architecture and painting. In the Academy she has been chief of practical exercises at the chairs of architectural design Goldemberg and since 2002 to 2004 in Grinberg chair. She has been a researcher for the Institute EFUR (Function of Urban Evolution); researcher for FOINDI (FADU), unit “Technology for the Megalopolis” and “Technology in primitive man”. In 2001 she was assigned the fellowship NuevaTec, from the Ministry of Education and Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism, to investigate the subject “ Urban Morphology and Fractal Design”. Currently she is a senior researcher in the same field and is Ad honorem researcher at the Laboratory of mathematics and design, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of Buenos Aires. She is Associated Editor of World Architecture.org and has many publications and presentations in national and international symposiums.